Today on the Fusenews we begin with a mystery. Help me out here, gentle readers, I need your crowdsourced wisdom to solve a query for the ages. Every week I get my new copy of Publishers Weekly and settle down during my lunch break to read it cover to cover. It is one of my […]

Normally on a Sunday I like to do a light little Video Sunday piece, just highlighting the vids of the week. Not today. In light of yesterday’s record breaking marches worldwide, I’d like to pay homage to the children’s book illustrators that used their considerable talents to support the march, marchers, and more. In case […]

Hokey dokey. Too much stuff here to cover very well, but try we shall. Hold on to your hats, folks! It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. First off, you know how I was talking the other day about constructing the ideal educator website of children’s literature resources? Well, this might have to be one […]

Well, had this post just about wrapped up when the whole computer crashed on me. Viva la internet! Let’s see if I can recover what I lost. First off, the best thing in the world. Best. The world. Ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMSKgiygMxc&feature=embed He is, for the record, on Twitter now. I’m a bit reluctant to tell you […]

Honestly, I don’t quite know why I even bother doing Fusenews posts on Saturdays. As you might suspect, my readership dips considerably when the weekends hit, but an old Fusenews post is like a week old fish. Time does it no favors. As such, I shall cut through my seething envy of everyone at BookExpo […]

It’s always the filler. I have this little file where I jot down ideas for posts on days when my brain is mush, and most recently I jotted down the old “casual diversity” question a friend asked me once. Figured it would make for a good quickie blog post and then I’d be on my […]

There are some days when you are so utterly floored by delight that all you can do is throw up your hands and say to the universe, “I’m out!” That was yesterday. I’m out, folks. I hit the top. It’s all downhill from here. And I’m so young! It’s sad when you peak at 34. […]

Allrighty then (remember when this phrase was a thing?). Time to whip out a Fusenews in this new format. Let’s crank her up and see what she can do! Let’s start with the me stuff. This happened while I was on vacation: The folks at the New York Times asked me to be a part […]

I think the nicest thing about the internet, for me anyway, is that if you wait around long enough things that you’ve seen live will appear online and then you can let lots of people know about them. For example, this video of Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket and Maira Kalman is not new. It does, however, […]

“Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.” That would be an old line from a TV column in the Marin Independent Journal by one Rick Polito describing the film The Wizard of Oz. My brother-in-law Steve brought it […]

See now, this is what I get for waiting when I see a good video. I’ve been doing my Video Sundays a little less frequently since I like to do them when the content is primo. The flipside is that sometimes I get scooped. Such is the case with today’s video. It is a delight […]

All the Wrong Questions: “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” By Lemony Snicket Illustrated by Seth Little, Brown and Company $15.99 ISBN: 978-0-316-12308-2 Ages 9-12 On shelves October 24th Last year I was running a bookgroup for kids, ages 9-12, when the subject of children’s books adapted into films came up. We talked about […]

At this point you just have to start throwing your hands up in the air. Then you have to start eyeing some of the older children’s authors and illustrators who are still around with great trepidation. We’ve been host to a SLEW of deaths already this year, but August is making May look like it […]

#48 The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (1999) 43 points Also brought me a huge list of new readers – boys and girls and teachers loved to read them out loud to the class. – Cheryl Phillips I’m a Snicket girl, loving the play with wit and words in this Series of Unfortunate Events. – […]

When I saw the documentary Library of the Early Mind for the first time I couldn’t help but notice that while everyone did a nice job, Daniel Handler kinda stole the show. His interview portions were very brief and always the funniest darn thing on the screen, the unfortunate side effect being that you kinda […]

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About A Fuse #8 Production

Features everything from librarian previews of upcoming children's books to news, reviews, and videos. If it has something to do with children's literature, it will rate a mention here.

Betsy Bird is the Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She's reviewed for The New York Times and Kirkus, writes articles for Horn Book and SLJ, and wrote the picture book Giant Dance Party. You can contact her at Fusenumber8@gmail.com or follow her on . . .